“This is our cry, this is our prayer, peace in the world.”

A twelve year-old girl, Sadako Sasaki, died of radiation induced leukemia ten years after the atomic bomb had fallen near her home in Hiroshima. Her story has inspired millions around the world, and her memory transformed a simple paper crane into an international symbol of peace and hope.

Sadako’s leukemia progressed rapidly and she was confined to the hospital just one month after her diagnosis. She knew the prognosis wasn’t good. She knew also that she didn’t want to die. Her father told her a Japanese legend that said if you folded one thousand paper cranes you would be granted a wish.

While hospitalized, Sadako began furiously folding cranes. She made a thousand and started on a second thousand. She was only able to fold 644 more cranes before she died on October 25, 1955 — not quite a year after being diagnosed, but her classmates continued folding after her death and created 356 more cranes. They made sure that Sadako was buried surrounded by a thousand cranes. They also collected money to build a statue in her memory, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane erected in Hiroshima’s Peace Park. A plaque on the statue reads: “This is our cry, this is our prayer, peace in the world.”

Living just beyond the terror of Charlottesville and watching hate-inspired language and actions, people of faith long even more deeply for peace in a hostile world. We saw hate on our television screens. Our children saw it — groups of people beating each other with flagpoles and bats, throwing punches, dousing people in raw sewage, using chemical sprays on each other, chanting hate slogans, driving a vehicle into a crowd of people, leaving one person dead and many others injured. With great vitriol, the demonstrators trumpeted anti-black racism and anti-Semitism, displaying swastikas on banners and shouting slogans like “Jews will not replace us,” and “blood and soil,” a phrase drawn from Nazi ideology.

So our hearts are heavy, our spirits nursing despair. We are desperately searching for ways to immerse our lives in the quest for peace and justice, but there are moments when hope is small. There are times when the skies above us look ominously dark, without even one sparkle to light our way. There are moments when we are filled with fear and doubt, convinced that peace in our world, in our nation, in our communities, even in our hearts, is all but impossible. The words of Russian author Anton Chekhov offer a glimpse of hope.

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.

Can we really hear angels? Do the skies still give light? Shall we make a thoudand paper cranes? Shall we pray more constantly and fervently? Shall we look deeper into our own hearts to find the core of our own peace? Shall we move and speak and act with courage in places where evil reigns?

Perhaps we must do all of that, and more — whatever it takes, however long it takes, whatever the cost. But most importantly, we must not lose heart, holding hope high so that those who see us will see hope, new and fresh and full of faith.

Once in a generation’s life, there is a spectacular lineup of the sun, moon, and earth causing a solar eclipse. Today millions of people will look into the sky to experience it. Everyone who stops to look skyward — regardless of their age, race, nationality, sexual identity — will see the very same moon and sun. When we experience the darkening of the sun today — a stunning darkness in the midst of daylight — perhaps the experience will remind us that, even in the dark, the sun still shines.

The darkness demonstrated in Charlottesville will not prevail. People of good will and kindness will stand together in solidarity to work for peace. People of faith, peacemakers called by God, will not allow the darkness to cover all that is right and just in the world. The music of hope inspires us still . . .

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

This is our cry, this is our prayer, peace in the world.